AMERICAN MEDICINE: THE SCALIES OF JUSTICE

March 14, 2023 -Durt Fibo

To balance out Walgreen’s refusal to sell mifepristone (aka “the abortion pill”) in 21 states where Republican attorneys general loom large, Rite Aid pharmacy has just been sued by the US Department of Justice for illegally dispensing “millions of opioid pills and other controlled substances” over a 5-year period.

Walgreens operates 8.802 pharmacies in the U.S., while Rite Aid runs 2,330 across 17 states, although these numbers are obfuscated because Walgreens actually took over around 2,000 Rite Aid outlets (roughly half of the total then open) before the FTC stopped the full monopoly plan back in 2018.

The DOJ is pursuing evidence limited to the period of 2014 to 2019. Furthermore, it is charging Rite Aid with violating the federal False Claims Act by submitting false prescription claims to government healthcare programs such as Medicare and Medicaid -which is one of the most preferred business tricks in America.

Walgreens likewise has a glowing history of defrauding state and federal health care programs, with repeated fines totaling $312,000,000, and over twice that sum for having abusively “contributed to the opioid crisis”